My Funny Valentina (10 page)

~
7~

‘
STASH, I’M NOT
going to take your bed.  I can sleep on the couch.’ Valentina said, with arms wrapped tight around her middle.  Maintaining the same the awkward pose she’d exhibited since entering his bedroom at the apartment.

‘
You take it, Val,’ Stash repeated from his own stiff stance holding up the doorway, ‘you bought it after all.’ His gruff reminder giving them both pause, both remembering, he knew, exactly
why
she’d bought the bed.  Because after an intense night of headboard-banging lovemaking some months after they met, they’d broken his old bed. 

Valentina had used her paycheck from her
Scintillating
gig to buy him a new one. Had it delivered as a surprise for him while he was at work.  When he’d walked into his bedroom to change out of his work suit, the splendid sight awaiting him had been Valentina poured into a white satin-and-lace nightgown.  Striking a provocative pose on her stomach across the mattress of a new king size bed with sturdy wooden headboard, shapely long legs kicked up high in the air, a captain’s hat perched at a saucy angle on her head. 

‘
Hey sailor, wanna help me launch this ship?’ she’d purred in her body-tingling seductive rasp.

‘
Permission to come aboard the SS Valentina, captain!’  he’d rasped, tearing off his shirt sending buttons flying.  Hitting the bed so fast; he’d been surprised they hadn’t broken the new one then and there. Grabbing the chilled bottle of his best champagne from her hands, he’d popped the cork – painfully close to popping his own, his bulging erection throbbing against his pants zipper in anticipation – and tipped the bubbly liquid all over her body making her gasp and laugh. ‘I christen the SS Valentina, sole property of Stash Karas, and when this boat’s a rocking,
nobody
better come a knockin...’

Stash blockaded
further memories of how he’d next lapped the champagne up from the pulsing sweet hollow of her throat, from the curved concave of her stomach, then from between her...

‘
Two rooms seemed like more than enough once,’ he stated a little too abrupt, voice noticeably stressed despite his best attempts to regulate it, ‘but with all the baby’s new stuff in the spare room I’m a little short on space now.  Go ahead and take the room, Valentina,’ he went to the linen closet and removed a pile of fresh sheets and towels, tossing them on to the bed, ‘you’ll be able to hear Zoey if she cries from next door. I’m fine on the couch in the living room.’

‘
Okay, if you insist,’ Valentina’s agreement was quiet; neither pointing out that Stash’s six foot three inches would likely hang about a foot over the edge of the sofa.  They were both walking on eggshells around each other now that Zoey had been put down in the expensive new crib Evelyn had had delivered along with all other sorts of baby paraphernalia, leaving them without their primary focus of attention.

‘
I think I’ve got eggs and bacon in the fridge if you’re hungry, not sure if there’s much else to eat though,’ Stash said.  He caught the quick sideways look she shot him as she reached to pick up the sheets to change the bed linen.  A look that asked where he was getting his meals.  Was there another woman...a woman besides his mother cooking for him now? 

No,
there’s been no other woman cooking for me.  There’s been no other woman since you.  Period.

H
e could tell her that now. But he wouldn’t. 

He
wouldn’t tell her how in the first few months after she’d left, he’d lost so much weight his tailored suits had bagged around his once lithe frame.  How his lovingly engraved wedding band had no longer stayed on his much thinner finger, slipping off repeatedly.  How he hadn’t been able to
stomach
his mother’s meals she’d made for him any longer.  Or how it had taken Evelyn’s stern talking to, to finally snap him out of his lovesick malaise after she’d come back for her forgotten bifocals one evening and found him in his office, head down on his desk, a half-empty bottle of whiskey before him that had taken the place of dinner most nights.

Stash
, I can’t stand to watch you destroy yourself any longer.

T
ears had been visible in her eyes he’d detected looking up at her, his own bleary and blood-shot. 

You’ve got
just two choices.  You can go find her, drag her back like a caveman and try to force the relationship to work, or you can wait for her to come back...when she’s ready.  And she will, if there is truly love there.   But until then, you have a business and a family that depend on you.  That need you to be the man you are, Stash.  The man you have always been.

Stash had nodded when
she’d finished talking.  Had stood up, hugged her five-two frame and felt her hug him back until she’d pulled herself briskly away, straightening her crisp pencil skirt, patting her tidy bun back in place.  Hiding the emotion, she felt for the boss who was like the child she’d never had, behind her starched professional veneer. 

Now enough of that
touchy-feely nonsense, Mr. Karas, this is a place of business after all!

‘
Don’t worry about me, Stash, I’ll find something when I get hungry,’ Val told him now, ‘and I’m sticking to a pretty healthy diet anyway – since I’m still breast feeding.’

Stash
grew silent, a searing vision of Valentina with Zoey’s dark head suckling at her breast flashing before his eyes.  He knew he would crawl across the desert naked, give every drop of blood in his body, to be able to witness that hallowed sight.  ‘Well, I can go shopping in the morning, just make a list – I’ll get whatever you need – whatever Zoey needs too,’ he said in a stilted tone that resembled his normal voice only a little.

‘
Thank you.’

There was
another long silence and Stash made a half-hearted attempt to fill it, running a stiff hand over his head.  ‘Look, I...er...I was thinking about ordering a pizza – I can get it half vegetarian.  You in?’

‘
Pinello’s?’ she asked, naming the Chicago establishment word-famous for its delicious pizza pies.

‘
Of course,’ he said with a grin twitching up his lips.  ‘Deep dish, extra mushrooms and onions.’

‘
I’m in!’ she said with an answering smile, ‘I had dreams about that place after all the endless sushi bars in California.’

What else did you dream about
at night – did you ever dream about me?

‘
I’ll make the call,’ Stash turned away.  Left the room before the burning question could pass through his lips.  ‘Should be here in thirty minutes,’ he called out to her a few minutes later from the hallway.

‘
Great – I’ll have time to get out of this outfit and take a quick shower to freshen up,’ she called back.

D
id she have to put that particular image in my mind?

T
here’d been a time when a statement like that had been nothing but a thinly veiled invitation.  A summons for him to come help her pull off that clingy turtleneck she wore, unzip those tight blue jeans from the curve of her hips, unhook her bra and cradle and lift those breasts that were so much fuller after giving birth to his child, in his hands...
damn! 

‘
It’s going to be one long freaking night if you don’t pull it together, Karas,’ he muttered to himself, taking off his Brioni suit jacket, unknotting his Hermes tie and yanking it from around his neck.  Stash tossed the expensive clothing carelessly in a hallway closet then stalked into the kitchen, shoulders tense beneath his dress shirt, busied himself transferring bottles of cola from the pantry into the refrigerator to chill until the pizza got there. 

He would have preferred
to chill a bottle of wine to help him relax, help him shake these persistent memories, but he wasn’t sure if women who were breastfeeding could drink, and it would be rude to imbibe if she could not. 
And what can’t she eat anyway?
  There was a lot he didn’t know about that area, he reflected. 

A lot he didn’t know about being an instant father
also, he thought, absently twisting open one of the bottles and taking a chug of lukewarm cola with a grimace.  But he’d had a good example in his dad and he would have to go on instinct.  He and Val would both just have to feel their way through this new relationship they were going to have to build together, Stash resolved, putting the bottle back down on the counter and reaching up, opening the cabinets to pull out plates.

Valentina pulled close the bedroom door before kicking off the snug jeans she’d changed into at the studio while Stash had waited, and stripping the fawn-colored cashmere turtleneck off over her head.  She grabbed one of the towels from the bed and headed for the en suite bathroom in just her lacy white bra and underwear.  Walking towards the shower, she automatically bent to pick up a towel lying on the tiles a foot away from the hamper. 

How many times
did I scold him about that?

Memories of how
Stash would burst back in to the apartment bedroom on an adrenaline rush kept her still for a moment.  Recalling how he’d be streaked with sweat from his early morning jog with all the other fitness fanatics and their panting dogs who crowded the lakeshore trails along nearby Lake Michigan.  Stash would proceed to peel his running shorts down over his lean hips, and tug his neon-striped tank top over his broad muscled shoulders.  Would grab a towel from the linen closet, wiping the perspiration from his brow and chiseled golden body before playfully tossing it where she lay in bed nearly salivating, enjoying watching the show. 

Valentina
would squeal in mock disgust, rolling away from it as though it held the plague. 
Yuck!  Put that stinky thing in the hamper, Stash! 
Laughing, he’d snatch up the towel, flick it at her behind then toss it with a Michael Jordan jump shot motion in the direction of the hamper – always missing it by a mile before he’d turn back to the bed, scooping her up and hauling her into the walk-in, marble-tiled shower with him. 

‘
I need someone to help me scrub my back and it’s the maid’s day off,’ he’d say to her shrieked token protests as the warm spray of water hit her, soaking her nightgown through until he’d dispose of that too.  The crumpled ball of wet silk landing beside his rumpled towel on the floor, his lips finding hers while her hands had slid down over slickened shoulder blades to grasp his taut backside, her nails biting in making him wince at the sensual sting of pain.  He would brace himself, stiff-armed, one hand against the shower wall, the water cascading over them as he’d used the other hand to guide his swollen erection inside of her, groaning ‘dear Lord,
Val!
’ when he’d found her already wet there too, already steaming for him....

With the
rescued towel held to her face, her nose eagerly sniffed out traces of the patented ‘Stash’ scent of male sweat, musk and his stimulating distinctive pheromones that were like catnip to her pussycat, making her want to go batshit
crazy
and rub it all over herself, roll on the floor with it, scratch at it and... 

‘
Val – the pizza’s here!’

Oh
God, have I been standing here daydreaming about Stash for thirty whole minutes?

‘
I’ll be right out!’ Valentina called back, ‘I’m getting into the shower now.’  She quickly rid herself of her bra and bikini briefs and did just that, taking her quickest shower on record in that particular bathroom. 

And
her loneliest.

~~~

‘Why did you come back to Chicago, Val?  There must have been a lot more modeling jobs for you in L.A. than here.’

Valentina hesitated
before answering his query, placed her third slice of deep dish pizza with extra mushrooms and onions back on her plate on the kitchen table as though she’d suddenly lost her appetite.  ‘I – had to come back, Stash.’

‘
You
had
to?’ he asked with raised brow, shutting the box lid on the last slice of Pinello’s and sliding it away.

Valentina appeared to bite her lip, his eyes
instantly drawn there like a magnet.  But her next words zoomed his eyes back up to hers, his spine stiffening.  ‘I had to come back to Chicago.  For Zoey’s sake.’

Stash sat up
even straighter in his chair.  Hearing something in her voice.  Something that curdled his blood.  Something he hadn’t heard since the day after Valentine’s a year ago when she’d called him at his mother’s and tearfully begged,
‘Just come home, Stash! Please.’

‘
What do you mean, Valentina?  Why does Zoey
need
to be in Chicago – you mean so I could see her?’

‘
No,’ her voice was wispy.  Tremulous.  ‘Zoey’s...sick...Stash.’

His heart stopped beating for a moment. 
‘What do you mean...
sick?
’

She opened her mouth and began to talk
, but Stash could not have told you later one word of what she said in those twenty minutes after she’d uttered ‘Zoey’ and ‘sick’.  At some point, she retrieved brochures from her purse.  Used the ominous words ‘congenital’ and ‘defect’.